toucanBox – January 2021: Planets Poster & Tie Dye Butterfly

ToucanBox is a flexible subscription service that encourages little fingers and minds to stay curious, creative and busy, which is especially important during this uncertain and confusing time. The box is aimed at children aged 3-8. Penny is now 4 and although she often finds a few of the activities challenging, she always has fun playing and experimenting with the materials. Every box brings a different opportunity to explore different textures, colour and materials, as well as develop her creativity, independence and knowledge of the world around her.

With Penny’s routine completely turned on its head, opening her monthly toucanBox has become even more of a treat. During the pandemic, deliveries have still remained on time and the high quality of materials inside has stayed consistent. It’s been hard to continually come up with new ways to keep her entertained whilst stuck inside. Our art cupboard supplies have taken a serious hit over the last few weeks and she’s bored of watching the same monotonous kid’s shows, playing the same repetitive board games and staring at the same four walls. There’s only so many trips to the woods and walks with the dog we can squeeze into our daily routine at this time of year without freezing our poor toes off too. Thank goodness for toucanBox. All the hard work is done for you…

Each box (personalised with your child’s name) contains two activity packs full of inspiration and materials, a colourful magazine with stickers and a very small surprise gift. Each activity has a rating to give you an idea of the level of grown-up assistance needed, messiness and whether of not drying time needed.

Planets Poster

Contents: filter paper, space stickers, glue stick, glue dots, glow in the dark stars, marker pens, tissue paper, space poster and pipette. 

This activity was fantastic for Penny’s age. Whilst creating her poster she spoke endlessly about aliens and Buzz Lightyear. She found it fascinating that there are other worlds out there and she told me how the stars looked little because they are far away, which I thought was incredibly insightful for a 4-year-old. She never fails to surprise me and I love how toucanBox provides opportunities like this to learn and have fun together as a family.

The activity involved colouring in the filters and sticking on strips of tissue paper and then slowly dropping water on top. This causes the ink to spread and swirl creating curious patterns and the surface of our planets. We then glued them onto our poster, using the bigger filters for Saturn and Jupiter and decorated it with glow and the dark stars, astronaut stickers and added golden rings for Saturn.

Tie Bye Butterfly

Contents: clothes pegs, coffee filters, pipe cleaners & marker pens.

This activity is very similar but gave Penny a chance to look more closely at colours and make predictions. Once again, she drew patterns onto the filter paper but then folded them to create a cone shape, dip then in water and watch the colours separate and blend together to create new colours. Apparently, this process is called Chromatography. It wasn’t just Penny learning something new this month!

We then let the paper dry, scrunched it up and attached them to our wooden pegs to create the wings of out butterfly. Penny then added more details and use the pipe cleaners as the antenna.

Also included are a collectable magnet, sticker sheet and magazine. The magazine is full of activities, ideas, recipes, colouring-in pages, puzzles and games to further extend your child’s learning and development. Penny spent hours using the markers included to design her own badge, create a ‘happy collage’ and think about her new year’s resolutions.